


Not Just For Work (Isn't For Play)

by missmollyetc



Category: Power Rangers Ninja Storm
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 10:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/pseuds/missmollyetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cam’d been a killjoy from the moment they’d met, and it looked so freaking good on him, like in the comics when, like, the evil dude turned the heroes evil and it meant they wore a lot of leather and, like, committed petty theft before they turned all nice and brought in cupcakes to make up for it.  Cam was like that all the time, except for the cupcakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Just For Work (Isn't For Play)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Revieloutionne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revieloutionne/gifts).



> Thanks and grateful hugs to my betas: thefourthvine and celli, who grant me far more patience than I deserve.

The bike was dead. Finished. Kaput. _Doneski_ , and Dustin didn’t need this right now. The expo was next Tuesday, the part would take at least that long to get to Storm Chargers, and the BucksCaf circuit wouldn’t wait for a busted rally rider who couldn’t even take care of his own bike, and Lothor—oh, hell, Lothor would find out through his evil space ninja spy/mind powers and then—

“Hey!” Kelly yelled from up near the front counter. “What—who the hell just left this bag of mold on the counter?”

Dustin winced. So much for bringing his lunch; Chez Vending Machine it was. He glanced around the empty garage, and looked down at his feet. His shoes were outlined in tufts of greenish-yellow grass, and a thin vine had looped itself around his left ankle. 

“Oops,” he muttered, and bent down. “Sorry little guy,” he said, unwrapping the vine and patting the tip. “Everything’s fine, you go back down okay?”

The blunt end poked his fingers and then curled in on itself, burrowing down beneath the now cracked concrete and taking the grass shoots with it. Dustin sniffed the air. Sweet dirt and ripe seeds, warmth and hunger in his belly. The earth beneath his feet rumbled once, but quieted as he sat down. He crooned to it, thinking cold and winter thoughts, visualizing snow on top of sleep so it needed to just chill because spring hadn’t sprung… Kelly swore loudly out front, and then apologized to somebody. Dustin shook himself, and climbed back to his feet just as his communicator beeped.

He brought the wristband to his mouth and pressed the talk button. “Dustin,” Cam said, just as cranky as usual. “The sensors are showing a fluctuation at your position—” Dustin winced again. “What did you do?” Cam finished.

“Nothing!” Dustin said, nudging some of the broken concrete back into its home. “Nope, nothing, we are just, uh, dandy and fine? Fine and dandy!”

He glanced around, looking for stray plants or more cracks, but he thought maybe that flowering bush by the fire extinguisher had been there before. “Just at work!”

“Uh huh.”

He heard the click-clack of Cam’s typing and then, “Would that be why Storm Chargers is currently registering a balmy 75 degrees in January?”

Dustin wavered, and the crack at his feet widened. He nudged it back down again; sometimes being an earth ninja was so _distracting_. “Uh…localized…freak summer?”

Another silence, and Dustin mentally filled in Cam’s traditional “I’m alone, yet I’m with Stupid” face, which was his second favorite of all Cam’s expressions behind “How did Shane break the lights _again_?” but way in front of “I have just lost my entire family and you three are all that’s left?” Yeah, definitely not a winner there. Dustin sucked in a breath and thought of Cam’s other faces, but added in his soft green t-shirt and worn blue jeans, rather than the samurai leathers he lived in now. Or…or! Cam with his jacket unzipped, all hot and sweaty and breathing hard from riding the track—even though that’d been Cyber Cam so maybe it didn’t count, but they _looked_ the same and it was just so awesome.

“Ten degree spike!” Cam yelled. “Dustin, stay there, I’m teleporting to your—”

“No! No,” Dustin said, pushing _frigid_ and _crying children_ so hard the ground shuddered and Kelly yelled again, and then _empty, still, dry_ until the smell of dust and was thicker than anything else in the room. He opened his eyes and the bush had died.

“It’s fine,” he said, shivering. He didn’t much like doing that, but boners in front of Cam were, like, boners in front of Sensei and that was just never happening. Or, not again. “It’s fine,” Dustin repeated. “Dude, it’s more than fine, it’s hard and firm, uh…”

Cam coughed. “Good to know,” he said.

Dustin’s toes curled in his shoes.

“Anyway,” Cam continued, and Dustin shook himself all over, thinking _dry_ and _calm_ like Sensei kept telling him. Kinda. That had been what the story about the marshmallows and the vacuum meant, right? “—just keep it under control over there! The last thing we need is some kind of News at Eleven expose on the Yellow Ninja Ranger who fixes motorcycles for a living. Remember the part where you’re supposed to be nice and normal?”

Dustin ran his fingers under the collar of his t-shirt, wincing. His baby sure as hell wasn’t fixed. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s totally fine, crystal clear.”

“Fantastic,” Cam muttered. “And don’t forget you’ve got practice with Sensei at three. If you’re late one more time…”

“Hey that works for me, though,” Dustin interrupted. “You have the coolest stuff in the sub-basement!”

He wrinkled his eyebrows and waited while the communicator crackled with static. The air felt a little heavy, but that might’ve been the meatball sub he’d scarfed for breakfast. Zesty sauce was always better the second day, but sometimes the olives weren’t.

“Just get over here now before you forget,” Cam snapped, and the connection cut out with a pop. He hadn’t even known the communicators could sound that judgy.

Dustin dropped his hands to his sides, and sighed, fluttering his lips. He rubbed both hands through his hair, and down behind his neck. His Cyclerella was still up on her blocks, waiting for him to fix the problem in time for the ball, but he wasn’t anybody’s fairy god-ninja. A couple of leaves off the dead plant fell to the floor as he walked by to the backdoor. Damn, would Kelly charge him for that? Not like she, like, _knew_ but sometimes it was like she knew and it really sucked how many plants she’d had to give away because they just, like, got along with Dustin and stuff. 

She’d never docked him for the little earthquakes he couldn’t help, either, which was the awesomest part, because earth ninja stuff was just…sometimes it was a lot to keep track of, even if Shane just thought he dug holes and shit like that. Dustin spread his feet for balance, and then leaned forward onto his toes, cracking the concrete for balance. He took a breath, centered, and pushed off towards Ninja Ops.

 

***

 

Okay, so it was sixty-forty Cam was gonna be pissed off about Sensei’s favorite scampering tree outside—er, Sensei’s natural testing ground area; branches totally grew back though, and that tree was really into the whole growing thing. He stepped down into Ninja Ops with his head bent, patting the last of the mulch off his back, where it splatted onto the floor. He looked up just as Cam turned around in the command chair, legs spread wide, and glared. 

“You’re cleaning that up,” he said.

Oh man, he wasn’t supposed to find that hot, he was pretty sure. Cam’d been a killjoy from the moment they’d met, and it looked so freaking good on him, like in the comics when, like, the evil dude turned the heroes evil and it meant they wore a lot of leather and, like, committed petty theft before they turned all nice and brought in cupcakes to make up for it. Cam was like that all the time, except for the cupcakes. 

Dustin grinned, and shrugged. “I’m telling you man, if you’re gonna build your own Not Evil Underground Lair, you gotta expect, like, some _dirt_ , you know?”

Cam rolled his eyes, and twirled around in his seat again, tapping out a sequence on the keypad he’d built in the arm of his chair. So totally Kirk. Dustin shook his hair out, eying the level of dust in his already dark bangs. He waved his right arm behind his back, thinking _spring forward_ and _Guinea Pig tree_. The mulch swirled up to tweak his nose before it headed back up the stairs; Dustin snickered. The weird part of ninja speed was how much the earth remembered him when he got close to Ninja Ops, pushing him out and slowing him down like somebody dumping a kid in the playpen—or behind the holographic part of the waterfall, whatever. It was nice, and everything; sometimes, he wondered if Tori felt the real waterfall the same way, or if Shane’s winds tickled him as a goodbye, too.

“Is Sensei around? I got that…stuff from the store you told me not to talk about again…” He trailed off, walking further into the main operating room, and glanced over at Sensei’s empty guinea pig house. Cam was typing, head bent in front of some kind of spreadsheet on his computer. His hair was a little fluffy today, like he’d just showered, and his leathers shone. 

“My father has taken it upon himself to seek out a place of serenity and seclusion while I’m in the final calibration stages for your new weapons.”

“Huh?”

“He’s hiding in the second level dojo until I’m ready to put away the ever so unnecessary technology responsible for his command center functioning.” Cam smacked something out of on his keyboard, and the screen flickered red, then green, and settled on both. “Damn it,” he muttered.

Dustin swallowed, nodding at the back of Cam’s head. He rubbed his palms together, and winced when another little cloud of dried earth puffed out from his half-gauntlets. It sucked when Cam and Sensei fought; everyone had to pretend it wasn’t happening, and all Cam’s marathon inventorying of the lower floor storage rooms were just him getting his Samurai on, or something. Or that Sensei just ‘happened’ to remember some freaky-deaky new way to kick practice hologram ass through the power of, like, becoming one with his inner-outer…animal thing. Actually, maybe animal thing wasn’t the word, because Sensei Xi had always said that _Sensei’s_ big deal had been, like, the whole Strategy of the Four Corners or whatever, and he’d been all into winds, so maybe he was like _Shane_ —

“—ustin. Dustin!” Cam snapped.

Dustin jumped. Cam was leaning forward over his keyboard, hands braced on the desk, and raising both eyebrows. Ouch. Cam’s Both Eyebrows like Mrs. Kumar in Eighth Grade face. They were, like, six seconds away from the Teeth Grind of Doom. Dustin grinned slowly, and leaned back on his heels. “Just thinking about brooming?”

Cam’s chin dropped a little. “Brooming?” he repeated.

“Yeah, you know…” Dustin stacked his fists and swished back and forth. Cam rubbed his palm over his face, dragging down his lower lip. “Brooming,” he muttered. “Of course.”

He pushed away from his desk, and sighed, unleashing his Dustin-sized “You Need a Minder, Oh God It’s Me’ face. “Stop doing that,” he said. “You’re going to bend the floors again.”

Dustin looked over his fists, slowing his swing, and wrinkled his nose. There was some definite dimpling going on down there. “Right, sorry, dude—Cam.”

He shook out his fists and planted the soles of his shoes directly onto the wooden floors. Then, he did a quick root check, making sure nothing was going to come popping out of the boards again. They weren’t new enough for growth, but he couldn’t help it. Cam’s stuff was just so…easy to break sometimes. Even now, Dustin could feel the ground outlining the rooms Cam had designed, that thread of granite near the kitchen was his favorite, holding them in place.

“Hell, no wonder I’ve been registering temp. spikes at Storm Chargers this week, do you just do this all the time?” Cam asked, flicking his arm out and around to his side. “I’d kind of hope all the extracurricular practice would make you better at control.”

Dustin swallowed, and shrugged. “It’s just me,” he said. “There’s just…I’ve got some stuff you know? Like, biking stuff.”

Cam sighed. It did great things for his whole…general area. His samurai gear was so formal, but it was still built for quick strike work, so the sighing and the shoulders…it was good. Dustin licked his lips and cleared his throat, pulling down on his own jacket.

“Biking—you know what? I’m tired of repeating you,” Cam said, turning back to his keyboard. “Step under the scanner so I can get back to work.”

“Scanner?” Dustin asked as he walked over to the desk. He went on tip-toes to try and see over, then around, the top monitors, but there wasn’t anything different except for the shower head? “Dude, are you sure that’s gonna work?”

He pointed up, and Cam followed the path of his finger. He blushed, and Dustin rocked a little on his toes, firming thinking _stay_ at the grumbling dirt behind the walls. Crushing on Sensei’s son wasn’t supposed to be, like, literal. 

“It was Cyber Cam’s idea,” Cam muttered. “We had the parts in house anyway.”

Dustin nodded. “Yeah, du—Cam. I get that. Money’s tight for you guys too, huh?”

“Money is _not_ , you know what fine. Whatever.” Cam turned his head away and started typing again, smacking the enter key with two fingers. “Step closer.”

“How’s Cyber You anyway?” Dustin asked, moving under the shower head. He stretched his arms out from his sides, and tried not to think about cancer scanners at the airport. Ranger tech was so much better, and there was no way Dustin was going to grow anything extra. The bright green light kind of tingled through his uniform.

“He’s fine,” Cam said, tap-tap-tapping away. “He’s doing the recalibrating I was supposed to be doing right now. Are you sure you’ve been balancing your qi? It doesn’t look like it.”

Dustin shrugged his face, trying not to use any other part of him. “Been kinda busy, you know? Extra shifts.”

Cam hummed, and the computer did a flashy thing over the outline of what was maybe Dustin’s body. It looked kind of lumpy, though, and yellow in the wrong spots. Dustin sighed. 

“What do you mean ‘extra shifts?’” Cam asked, sitting up straight. 

“My bike’s voltage regulator needs to be replaced. I can do it, I just…getting the part’s going to be a little tough this month.”

He saw Cam bend down again. The green shower-scanner light turned yellow and warm. “Did none of you listen when I set up the schedules for your downtime? If you’re always on-call as Rangers, then the free time away from—”

Dustin startled a little, and little drifts of dust sprinkled down through the extraction fan shafts. “Oh sure, like you’re so good at it either,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Cam frowned. “I don’t pull down hillsides when I’m tired.” 

“Yeah, well, I don’t create CGI-me’s who tie me up and leave me,” Dustin snorted. 

Cyber Cam popped out of the ceiling surveillance camera, and bounced over to real Cam’s side, slouching with his hands in his loose painter’s jeans. “Dude, I so totally promised never to leave him like that again!” 

Cam twisted to look up and over at Cyber Cam, black hair sticking up through the hand he dragged over his head. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Did you fix the front plates on the cycles?”

“Almost done, my sensors picked up Pigpen over here and I thought I’d go see the fun.” Cyber Cam glanced up at Dustin and waggled his eyebrows. “What’s up with the shower scene, bro?”

“I’m running a scan,” Cam said, already turned back to the monitors.

Cyber Cam pushed him lightly, rocking him in his chair. “Thought you fleshies didn’t defrag,” he said, adjusting the straps of his tank top over his t-shirt. He glanced up at Dustin with real Cam’s ‘When Did You Get Interesting’ face, and Dustin told his feet to stay put and the walls not to squirm.

He looked away. It was weird watching Cyber Cam sometimes; he and Cam together were like those Doublemint gum commercials when he was a kid. Like, Dustin kept wanting to hit rewind and see the differences. Besides the clothes, because Cyber Cam was pretty married to the hacker chic look and Cam was still really into his uniform. It wasn’t that Dustin hated the leathers—hell no, he would fight for Cam’s right to wear leather any day—but he kind of missed the checked shirts. But the faces were the deal breaker, really, because they were _Cam’s_ faces on Cyber Cam’s face, and they were both really bitchy but Cyber Cam was, like, sneaky about it. 

“So, wait, you’re working on bikes?” Dustin asked. “I thought you said you were working on weapons?”

“I’m working on everything,” Cam snapped, and Cyber Cam rolled his eyes, slouching further on the desk. How did he even do that? When he’d been all psycho Hal on them, he’d touched all kinds of stuff, but Cam said Cyber Cam wasn’t a robot.

“Well, I mean, like if you’ve got some extra work _here_ it wouldn’t be like I was cutting in to my downtime—which would totally be breaking my awesome schedule—and so…” 

The shower-scanner light snapped off, and Dustin sneezed. He moved closer to Cam and widened his eyes, grinning. He very carefully didn’t think _helpful_ or _let’s go_ because of the last time with the asphalt and the city’s new community garden. He saw Cyber Cam tilt his head and scratch his hair underneath his knitted cap.

“I’m not paying you to help out around Ninja Ops,” Cam said, glancing up at him. His eyes looked up and down and Dustin paused, blinking. Cam sniffed and turned away. “You should get something to eat before your practice.”

“I’m not late.”

“He’s not late yet.” 

He and Cyber Cam spoke at the same time. Cyber Cam laughed, crossing his arms over his chest, and knocked Cam again, tugging on his bangs. “Come _on_ dude!” he said, dodging Cam’s arm sweep. “Help a ninja out!”

“The day I pay Dustin for work I don’t need him to do is the day he…makes out with you!” Cam said, pushing backwards in his chair and fending Cyber Cam off with one arm. The wheels skittered a foot before knocking into the end of the desk.

Cyber Cam raised both arms to the sky, stretching, and laughed. “How much are our lips worth, o’Creator?”

“I’ll do it.”

Dustin blinked, and everyone else froze. His mouth went dry; dust floated down from the extractor fans. Cyber Cam was leaning on the desk, legs crossed at the ankle, and Cam was still in his chair, both feet hooked around the wheel struts. Dustin felt the dirt around them, settling in, pressing down, trickling through in all the ways that the earth never stopped moving. Suddenly, Cam’s chair squeaked again, and Cyber Cam’s edges flickered with static.

“What?” They both said, looking at him.

“I’ll do it,” Dustin said again, licking his lips.

Cyber Cam’s mouth curled upwards. “Oh yeah?” he asked. 

Dustin moved forward, wiping his hands down his sides, and Cyber Cam stood up straight. He took his knitted cap off, twisting it between his hands. The air was a little heavy, dragging itself into Dustin’s lungs and hanging out.

“I was joking,” Cam snapped, standing up. “No one is—damn it, no one is kissing anyone.”

“Hey, I need—”

“Dustin, shut up.” 

Cam shooed Cyber Cam away from the desk, and turned to face him. His mouth folded down into a shape Dustin’d never seen before, white at the corners. He crossed his arms over his chest, and barely rolled his eyes when Cyber Cam did the same.

“If I can’t knock up a voltage regulator out of what I’ve got in the sub-basements, you can make out with my AI as much as you like, but I’m not running a cybernetic kissing booth, okay?”

“Look, dude—”

“Didn’t I say it so you’d understand it?” Cam asked, shifting back and forth on his feet. “Nobody is kissing anybody for money, and that’s final.”

Cyber Cam groaned. “You are _such_ a killjoy. I just downloaded, like, all the VidXchange tutorials!”

Cam’s face briefly curdled into his ‘I Am Samurai, Enjoy Death’ face, before he visibly shook it off, and refocused. Dustin licked his lips, and swallowed. That was a weirdly hot face. Did everybody go for that? He’d been, like, six seconds away from putting his lips on that. Or, on that, but not that. Oh God, and Sensei was, like, psychic and six floors down. What if he was sensing a disturbance in the Morphin Grid even now and was scurrying as fast his little legs could—

“ _Dustin_.”

Wow, there really was no difference in Cam and Cyber Cam’s voices when they said his name like that. He stepped back, and took a deep breath. 

“A new voltage regulator, huh? And all I have to do is threaten to kiss you? Or, other you?” He tried to grin, and mostly felt like his face was stretching too far.

Both of them rolled their eyes. “Go away and see whether or not we’ve got the materials,” Cam said. “I’m too busy for this.”

Cyber Cam popped up, hands in his pockets. “I’ll help. There’s a lot of dark corners down there.”

He waggled his eyebrows. Dustin told the ground to stop moving, very firmly.


End file.
